Skyline Packing (Quick)
At a glance
- Fast rectangular packing for instant layout preview on import
- Tessellates part outlines and places using a walking-skyline approach
- 8 rotation candidates at 45° steps
- Best for quick estimates before running a full NFP nest
Quick is the default auto-nest effort: a skyline bin-packing heuristic that lays out a typical job in about a second. Like all JetCad3 nesting it runs as compiled C++ in a background worker, so the UI stays live and parts animate onto the sheet as they're placed. Pick it from the Auto-Nest dropdown in the Parts browser, or leave it as the default that runs when nest-on-import is enabled.
How it packs
Parts are sorted tallest-first, then placed one at a time against a "skyline" — the running top edge of everything placed so far. Each part drops into the lowest point on the skyline where it fits, biased toward the nesting start corner (the sheet origin corner by default), and the skyline updates. Candidates are tried at 45° rotation steps — eight orientations per part. Collision uses the same placement proxies as the NFP efforts, so moderately concave outlines still tuck together rather than being treated as plain rectangles.
Where it fits
Skyline excels at rectangular and near-rectangular parts — plates, gussets, brackets — and as an instant sanity check on sheet count before committing to a longer Medium or Max run. For irregular or heavily interlocking shapes, the NFP efforts find tighter layouts. A custom skyline effort (Auto-Nest → Settings…, see Nesting Controls) can change the rotation step, enable Try different rotations to pack tighter, and turn on a hole pre-pass that fits smaller parts into the holes of larger ones before packing the rest.